While walking by the library in search for my participants I came across a couple of Queens’s college students sitting outside the library during free hour. I approached them and asked them if they had before their next class and if they were willing to exchange some thoughts on bullying. I started with asking them whether bullying is a problem at Queens College or not. Their response was that in their experience of 2-3 years in college they have not been victimized by bullying neither do they have been bullied another student. But they did tell me about their past experience in high school. According to them, bullying was more of a problem in high school but in college it wasn’t the same. They also mentioned even though they have not encountered bullying in their college life so far, that does not indicate that bullying does not exist in Queens College.

One of the guy said, he has seen a student been bullied in the Student Union building over an empty table. Two guys asked the guy who was sitting alone and drinking his coffee to leave right now or they would spill the coffee on him. He was sitting right across the table witnessing it and the guy who got bullied slowly picked up his belongings and left the table. The girl mentioned something interesting, which was that she usually gets cyber bullied by guys that she is not familiar with. She also added that due to the recent changes in technology people are fearless about cyber bullying due to the fact that there is a slim chance of knowing who they actually are. Following image is a good example of cyberbullying.

Ozgur Erdur-Baker “ Cyber bullying and its correlation to traditional bullying, gender and frequent and risky usage of internet-mediated communication tools,” New Media and Society, Vol. 12, February, 2010, pp.109-125. This study investigated the relationships between cyber and traditionalbullying experiences regarding gender differences. In addition, the contributions of often and risky usage of Internet to cyber bullying experiences were examined. The results depicted that 32% of the students were victims of both cyber and traditional bullying, while 26% of the students bullied others in both cyber and physical environments.

Carter Hay, Ryan Meldrum “Bullying Victimization and Adolescent Self-Harm: Testing Hypotheses from General Strain Theory, “ Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 39, May, 2010, pp. 446-459. The data for this study comes from a school-based survey of adolescents in a rural county of a southeastern state (n = 426); 50% of subjects are female, their mean age was 15 years, and non-Hispanic whites represent 66% of the sample. The results revealed that both types of bullying are positively related to self-harm and suicidal ideation, net of controls. Also, those relationships are partially mediated by the negative emotions experienced by those who are bullied and partially moderated by features of the adolescent’s social environment and self.

Ersilia Menesini, Marco Modena, Franca Tani “ Bullying and Victimization in Adolescence: Concurrent and Stable Roles and Psychological Health Symptopms,” Journal of Genetic Psychology, Vol. 170, June, 2009, pp.115-134. In their article, authors selected 537 participants, aged from 13 to 20, based on their response to a self-report bully and victim questionnaire. Then authors compared the concurrent psychological symptoms of 4 groups (bullies, victims, bully/victims, and uninvolved students). The results demonstrated that bullies reported a higher level of externalizing problems, victims reported more internalizing symptoms, and bully/victims reported both a higher level of externalizing problems and more internalizing symptoms.

Methodology

While conducting my research I will be interviewing college students from various colleges such as Queens College, Baruch College, City Tech and York College. By interviewing student from different colleges it will give me a wider perspective about my topic. As I mentioned before almost every high school student have bullied or have been a victim of bullying. I will be asking them about their experiences regarding bullying in their school days and how it has effect them in their life’s.

The other part of my research will take in the account of their present lifestyle and find out if bullying has made an impact good/bad in their lives. I will be asking them if they still get bullied by their fellow students or by teachers and ask them what they do differently to deal with it now.

The visual lens of my research topic will examine if there is any gender discrimination in bullying, in order to be completely fair my participants will be equally divided by gender and also I will be asking them the same questions.

Ethics

I will disclose all required information to my participants and I will make sure they are aware of all the possible consequences. I will make sure that there will be no discrimination towards race, age, religion and gender.

Their identity and the information’s will be kept anonymous. The obtained feedback and data will solely be used for my research only. If their information is used without their consent they have right to take legal actions.

As I will be interviewing college students, I will not have to get permission from their legal guardians’ in order to interview them.

1. Indymedia is a network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organization who offers grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues. The main goal of indymedia is to report events from an unbiased point of view. The goal is achieved by open publishing, which means anyone can upload a written, audio and video report or a picture directly to the site through an openly accessible web interface.

2. Anyone can be a member of this group but it is mostly journalists. Indymedia welcomes everybody in their network; they need a wider perspective of the current issues.

3. This group is well organized, they are holding up the events that may or will affect our society. They are standing up for the regular people and fighting for justice and fairness.

4. This group mainly focuses on media activism.

5. I would join this group because it will be give me the power to express my thoughts regarding an issue. There may be issue that concerns my neighborhood itself, so it will be helpful if people are able to read my concerns and views.

Have you ever been bullied or bullied someone? If you were in the receiving end you would have known how it feels like, Bullying is a very negative act that is done by students mostly in High School that eventually creates a large problem in our society today. From bullying you will never achieve anything good but you might get a mere happiness or overwhelming power over someone temporarily, which should not be enough of a motivation to mentally scared a person.

The picture clearly portraits how 1 out of 3 teens in the United States feel in school. Violence and aggression is a common problem in our society now and one of the most common way children express their anger or frustration is through bullying. Bullying can take place in the form of pushing someone around, taking their lunch money or even bringing guns or other lethal weapons in school to terrorize other peers. Aggressive bully-like behavior in school is most often caused by an “identifiable group of bullies who systematically victimize specific groups of their peers.”(Bartini). There are many causes for bullying which should be taken care of before bullying can be eliminated from our society. Parents should be aware about what their children actions, they should keep a eye on their activities either and they should always correct them when they are wrong.
This is the photo I took when I visited my old High School and to be honest I was not a bit surprised to see bullying still existed there; I have seen my peers being bullied around in their junior and senior years. Bullying will be present in our society until or unless any actions are taken about it. It’s in our behavior to be superior than others and we will go to any extent to be achieve that, people who bully other in High School tend to think about themselves to be superior but when they grow up and face reality they don’t know how to take a fall but on the other hand people have been bullied tend to be more mental strong.

It is important that the process of taking pictures and publishing photographs is done in an ethical manner. Before taking a photograph, I will make sure that the person whom Im taking picture of understands what I want to illustrate and what the photos will be used for. I will get informed consent when taking photographs. I will also make sure that the individuals concerned have given permission for me to take the photograph and know what the photographs will be used for and where they may be published. In addition, I will make it clear that an individual can withdraw their consent at anytime.

I am most likely going to stick with my topic on Bullying since I got very good feedback on it. As proposed by commentators on my Final Project Post, I will be analyzing bullying in depth and also will include related issues like cyberbullying. I will also talk about things like oneself having power over another. The power could be either social power and/or physical power. In additon, I will introduce different types of bullying that takes place in different kind of atmosphere.

Furthermore, I am planing to go to the High School that I went to and observe the students. In addition, I will also interview those students who are bullied as well as those who bully others. My research will focus mainly on freshman students in High School.

In this assignment of the mini fieldwork, I assumed the role of a Dr. researcher and my partner Mohammad Haniff took the role of the participant. The topic that we chose to work on was on the quality of dining facilities on Queens College campus. I came up with few questions that I asked him while we took a walk around the cafeterias on campus. As, I was making up questions to ask Mohammed, I tried to keep them as simple and straight forward as possible. Firstly, we walked around the Kiely Hall and that is when I started asking Mohammed all kind of questions regarding the food provided at Queens College campus. I asked questions like, “What kind of food do you like?”, “What is your favorite spot to eat at, at the campus?” In addition, I asked Mohammad, several other important questions like whether or not the food tastes good and if it is affordable and healthy? While walking throughout the hallways in Kiely Hall, Mohammed showed me few vending machines. He told me that; he uses these machines to get snacks when he feels in the need to be.

Then we began walking toward the Q Café. The indoor sitting area of the Cafe was packed with patrons, students etc. The scene, basically, depicted the fact that most of the students do use the dining facilities on Queens College campus. Mohammed, personally, likes to get food from the Halal Stand, which is located outside the campus. It is because; First of all, the food itself tastes really good. Secondly, you do get enough amount of food for what you pay for. Therefore, it is worth spending money on. Mohammed does not think that food on the campus is affordable. He does admit that food provided on the campus, do not taste bad after all but is definitely not worth all of the money that you spend on it. Also, he thinks that even if there is healthy food available on campus, it is very expensive. Overall, the quality of the food on the campus is not so bad but the money needed to afford the food goes beyond a student’s budget. Last but not the least, Mohammed’s favorite spot to eat on the campus is by the fountains, right next to the library.